Nick Gelardi

Bestiaries

The medieval world is no stranger to mythical beings, and bestiaries delved into and detailed some of the most bizarre and interesting creatures ever illustrated. Bestiaries were collections, often books, that described various mythical beings with an illustration a description of them. These beings often had a religious significance to them, representing symbolic language from Western Christian art and literature in the Middle Ages.

A 12th-century illustration of a lion (3)

Origins

The Physiologus is the most known bestiary text, and it is also known as the first. It was compiled by an unknown Greek author, and some of its contents date back to the 2nd Century AD. Bestiaries, besides being used in medieval texts and stories, were originally used to educate young men on the correct morals they should exhibit. The bestiaries are associated with a lesson (4). As time went on, the Christian symbolism was removed from these texts and used to entertain medieval audiences in Europe in the sixteenth century. Richard De Fournival, a French philosopher, wrote one of the most famous erotic manuscript of all time, The Trouvere Tradition. He used the bestiary symbolism to detail a love relationship (5).

Winged Dragon (5)

The Phoenix (5)

Illustrations

Bestiaries were usually divided by land animals, birds, serpents and sea creatures. Regular animals were also depicted in bestiaries, such as cows, cats and crocodiles; however, the lion is known as the most prominent in medieval bestiary. The lion was always seen as a symbol of power, courage, wisdom and as a symbol of Christ, but it was also sometimes seen as a symbol Satan or the Antichrist, oftentimes depicted as a ferocious a tyrannical beast. The dragon, depicted with a tongue of fire and hard skin, was originally neither good or evil, but that changed after the Bible's depiction of Leviathan, a dragon that embodied evil forces. Unicorns are also a popular bestiary that has been depicted as good and evil, as some texts even associate unicorns with Jesus Christ and purity, but some portray them as violent and conniving creatures. The phoenix was similar to an eagle with red wings, and it represented rebirth and immortality. it was often compared to the rebirth of Jesus Christ, and gave people hope about redemption from a sin (5).

Unicorn, illustrated by Richard De Fournival (3)

Other stories and meanings behind the illustrations in bestiaries can be located in The Bestiary Blog (https://bestiary.ca/index.html), an interactive blog with more animal lore discussed within it. 

Modern Impact of Bestiaries

Bestiaries remain a component of pop culture and the stereotypical medieval culture. Pokemon is one of the more famous examples of bestiaries in modern culture, and bestiaries remain prevalent today through physical art. Statues made by modern artists depict bestiaries through porcelain, paper clay, plaster and other materials (3).

Sit, Stand, Kneel, 2019, by Janet Macpherson (3)

Work Cited

(1)"Bestiary." Wikipedia, 27 July 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary. Accessed 9 September 2023.

(2)"Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World." The Getty Museum, https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/bestiary/inner.html#:~:text=The%20bestiary%20was%20one%20of,aspects%20of%20the%20Christian%20faith. Accessed 9 September 2023.

(3)Morrison, Elizabeth. "Beastly tales from the medieval bestiary." British Library, https://www.bl.uk/medieval-english-french-manuscripts/articles/beastly-tales-from-the-medieval-bestiary. Accessed 9 September 2023.

(4)"Physiologus."Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiologus#:~:text=The%20Physiologus%20consists%20of%20descriptions,of%20the%20animal%20are%20derived. Accessed 9 September 2023. 

(5)"The Bestiary: Medieval Legends of Mythical Beasts." TheCollector, 16 August 2023, https://www.thecollector.com/medieval-bestiary/. Accessed 9 September 2023. 

(6)"The Medieval Bestiary: Animals in the Middle Ages." The Bestiary Blog, https://bestiary.ca/index.html. Accessed 9 September 2023.